Patient
by Nova Witness
Summary: Jennifer is a girl who has been living in a small house next to Arkham Asylum with her mother for her lifetime. One day, a small group of inmated escapes from the Asylum - including Jennifer's mother. She starts looking for her and finds out a dark secret. Her life becomes a nightmare...
1. Prologue

It was a safe place where I lived.

If I had told someone, he would have called me an idiot. But it was what it was: Safe.

It was no easy life living next to Arkham Asylum. When the children in grade two found out that I was living next to it, they started redlining me. And I started drowning. I really drowned in my own tears when I was sitting alone in my room. Mom always comforted me. It has always been like this: Mom and me against the world. Of course it wasn't always that easy, but I tried my best to be a good, a patient daughter. And this is what I had to be. Patient.

Mom worked in Arkham, so we lived next to it. She was feared of revenge of the inmates.

'They want Gotham, not Arkham. They'll leave this place as fast as they can when they escape', she'd said. She was right. There have been lots of escape attempts, but not even a single patient has discovered our little house through the years. Nobody did.

I've become familiar with the noises. Silence. Deep, dark silence. Or halogen headlights, which illuminated the dark and the helicopters, that were flying over the roofs of the night. Over the years I learned to hide my fear, I stopped hiding under my blanket. Instead I sat on the window ledge and watched. It seemed like a show to me, a little production of madness, a fight of men and madmen.

The men always won.

But the story I want to tell goes a different way.

And in the end you won't be able to tear apart men and madmen.


	2. Chapter 1

There is so much I want to tell you, but I think it would be better for you if I start with the beginning.

In the beginning there was silence. Deep, dark silence, as I told you.

It was the first escape attempt I can remember. I was four or five years old, I guess. To date, I don't know who escaped from Arkham that day, but I don't think that it was somebody dangerous.

That night I woke up and cried. My sleep had been a nightmare, so I was disturbed because of some unknown loud noises. I left my bed and went down the stairs to mom's bedroom.  
'Mom?', I asked frightened.

No reply.

'Mom?', I asked again.

I turned on the light on the corridor and squinted my eyes. Brightness. Limpid brightness. I didn't like that.

'Mom?'

I entered her bedroom and looked to her bed. It was empty. I was scared.

'Mom!'

That time, I didn't know what exactly was going on in Arkham Asylum or what her work was like. I was just too small to know anything about madness, even though it was all around me. Madness was just the flashing light that illuminated the dark, the rumble that tore apart the clouds, the rain that enclosed this cruel world I didn't know that time.

'Look… That's madness. Madness of nature', mom had said, when I had been afraid of thunder, 'Strangely beautiful madness.' Her eyes had gone lost in space, in deep, dark space.

But that day she wasn't there. I started crying, I started shouting, I started lashing about – nothing happened. I walked to the front door and opened it. The soft warm wind of a summer night blew into my face. Suddenly I became calm. Really calm. I closed my eyes and turned my face towards the sky, I felt the cold tears that ran down my jowl.

Lonely.

Never before I'd felt so lonely like in that dark summer night. And never again.

_I don't know how long I'd been standing in front of our house when the helicopter appeared. The strange noise_, the voices in my head whispered. _This wasn't a nightmare._

'Mom!', I shouted desperate, 'Mom!'

No reply. I panicked. I was alone, alone. Alone with that huge flying thing, alone with madness of technology. I went to the middle of the yard, followed this big thing with my eyes. It flew across the sky, across the night. Across my nightmares.

With my feet naked I walked through the dust. The dust of stars, the dust of time, the dust of centuries. I didn't feel scared anymore and I don't know what happened to me that night. I only knew that something was wrong, something would change soon. I was young; however, I realized that life wouldn't always be that easy. I turned around, went into the house again and closed the door quietly. Then I took my blanket and my cuddly toy and sat down on the stairs. I've been waiting for mom, for the warrant that everything was well.

'Everything's okay', I whispered, 'Everything. Isn't it, Teddy?'

I looked down to my cuddly toy. It didn't reply. Of course it couldn't.

When mom arrived, I almost had fallen asleep.

'Jenny', she said and her voice sounded worried, 'Why you aren't in your bed?'

I cried again.

'Mom… I… I was so worried about you', I whispered with tears in my eyes. She hugged me lovingly.

'Everything's okay, Jenny. Everything.'

She smiled at me. 'It was just a little accident', she said. 'Let's go to bed.'

I slept in her bed that night. And I had the feeling of losing her. I felt lonely.

I had the feeling of losing her.

Ever since that day I've had that feeling. The feeling that there was someone else in her life.

But I was too young and too innocent to know what was going on.


End file.
